Redstate

blue is calming.  So there you go.  

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God Bless America.

Oh, and by the way, it's Edith Jones.

... to tax incentives and entrepeneurship.  Better.

Erick, what were you expecting?

The reality is, we're doing it for Iraqis to build a stronger society over there.  Why not try it here?  Better this than the Great Society, no?

All things considered, that was a pretty darn good speech.

Rumor is that Karl Rove will be the reconstruction czar... Doesnt look good on paper to put the political guy in charge of a reconstruction project

If anybody could get it done on time and under budget it's him.

about 50 times what you have and then some

I was just watching the ABC news after speech coverage. Dean Reynolds was outside of the Astrodome desperately seeking someone to bash the President. Instead, they bashed their own local New Orleans government for not using the now infamous school buses and even owned up to the fact that they didn't evacuate when they could have. Everyone believed the President when he said they would all return home. Reynolds just grew more and more frustrated, moving for person to person for that negative soundbite.

I noticed that too. I imagine Ted Koppel was fuming, back in the studio.

johnson ever spent -

I was extremely proud of GWB tonight, he has laid out a plan that will require work on both ends. This is a solid plan. Yet the Dems will continue to place all the blame on Bush and ignore the total ineptness of Nagin and Blanco.

federal property since we are all going to own it.

I think i count 73 $'s.

Conservatively estimating we'll spend 250 billion on all that...stuff... that's 3,424,657.53 per dollar sign.  I think your post should have been longer.

I think his speech was 21 minutes, so that's $11,904,761,904.76 per minute.

Can we please go back and look at the Medicare, Energy, Transportation, Appropriations, Farm, and whatever else is necessary?

I agree with Bush that we need to invest in the area, honestly I do.  But we can't be all things to all people.  We have to make some serious changes at the Federal level, or we'll be looking to Venezuela for fiscal advice.

What, you don't see a certain genius in conservatives spending the federal government into bankruptcy?

Look at how well that worked for DC!!!  I'd rather not.

Wasn't the Gulf included in the Democrats' Marshall Plan for the Middle Class that Harry Reid spoke about after the President's 2005 SOTU address?  

Give me a break.

He was effusive on MSNBC, and Scarborough was much more positive than he has been about this mess. Interesting that W caught and seemed to turn their attention.

He also retains the chance to avoid making this the GOP New Deal in two, possibly three, key areas.

Politically, he's going to have to play off the governors' split in political sympathies (Barbour-R, Blanco-D) and possibly use Nagin - who given a crack in the door will swing back into the Bush-Jindal camp. The point being, to be able to come to congress with an aggressive federal effort based on private enterprise.

It's the Jack "empowerment zone" Kemp approach come to life.

Lots of tax incentives, private home ownership, sale or lease of federal property, public-private works improvement projects, and faith-based/non-profit grants. Even school vouchers to restore education asap.

Allow the states to generally direct the money, but no specific control and certainly no fund management control.

Also, keep suspending wage, labor, EPA and other market control mechanisms as long as emergency provisions allow - the action on Davis Bacon was the first step in this area. Grandfathering redevelopment rebuilding w/o EPA impact statements, if possible, is another big step.

I don't think it will all happen, but if the GOP congress ever intends to step away from W for it's own election purposes, this gives them the opportunity.

...and use this tradegy for you own socially conserative reengineering and see what Dr. Cadwalj creates.

How cannot it not be political? A 21st century WPA is an alternative, but we've already done that once.

• If people who live nearby can't return home yet, why was he allowed in for a photo op?
  
• How much electricity and gas that are in short supply there were were wasted for this visit?
  
• Did he pose in front of a church (St Louis Cathedral) to remind us how much he flaunts the "wall of separation"?
  
• Why should any BushClinton charity funds go to religious groups? Barry Lynn and the ACLU will see you in court.
  
• He still didn't apologize for being a racist and letting poor people of color die.
  
• He acknowledged slavery was a root cause, but failed to talk seriously about true reparations.
  
• What he's talking about would be a nice down payment but it's going to take a lot more than what he's talking about.
  
• $5,000 is an insult. Compare what he gave to rich white families from the World Trade Center vs what he gives to poor African-Americans here.

I went to take a look. They've picked up on ABC's black folks at the Astrodome, mentioned here and heavily on Lucianne's thread.

The only post I could find at Kos, by "dynamicstand," finds D's in denial:

Hook, line & sinker

I watched the speech and then the news. They interviewed many people who believed Bush and was in support of him. Many were African American who obviously have no clue about how they have been screwed by this administration. ...

I was thinking that the dumbing down of America is far worse than I thought. I then wondered if these people were in denial. One black woman said "I'm not gonna blame anybody, whatever God has planned I will not question it".

Well maybe she should know that Bush is now God and there should be questions for Halliburton. I guess God has a plan for Rudy Giuliani's company and all the other no-bid contracts awarded.

The only question any sane person would ask Halliburton is "When can you get started?"

Here's a commenter on the post:

Speaking of Hook, Line and Sinker

You apparently swallowed a pretty big hook yourself getting suckered into believing that those people you saw interviewed (assuming they are the same ones on ABC everyone else has been talking about) were real and not obvious plants.

Think about how black Americans normally vote. Do you really think that was legitimate?

I do believe the prez has em where he wants em.

I flipped thru the channels after the president's speech and pretty much heard what I expected. Cnn and Fox pretty staight forward reporting and MSNBC(Olbermann is an idiot) in all out DNC mode looking for an angle. Most channels had evacuees and asked them what they thought about speech. All seemed to say that they liked what they heard and look forward to any help the government could provide them. I have to admit that the speech sounded very expensive. Let hope that congress starts to seriously think about cutting spending. Sad to see that Pelosi and Kerry couldn't wait 24 hours to start bashing what they heard.

I have to admit, the man is a lot smarter than I thought. Actually, damn smart.

This is a HELLUVA big gamble, but if it pays off it could be decisive. It's one that the Dems have no answer for.

What Bush is doing is recasting the GOP as basically FDR Part Two, done perhaps a bit differently in some areas but basically the mother of all Keynesian pump priming and with a LOT of big government initiatives. Aimed, btw, SQUARELY at working class and middle class Americans. If this pays off we are talking a shift from 48-52% splits to basic FDR type realignments. Dems down in the 30% range and Reps in the 60% + range. No guarantees it will work, and lots of problems to work out, but that's the upside.

What, Dems are gonna scream "don't spend the money?" They have no answer. Meanwhile Bush looks like a leader and the Dems have ... Kerry. Whiner in Chief of the Whine and Cheese Party. The populist side has always stood Bush well, it's why the man born to the blue blood pretends to be a humble Texas Rancher; and Kerry, a middle class guy if ever there was one pretends he's in a "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" commercial.

Dems are hell bent in remaking themselves into Rockefeller Republicans, and good luck with that. Meanwhile just like Clinton stole the essentials of Reaganism from the Republicans in 1992 (culturally conservative populism, sunny optimism, and free-spending attitudes) so too has Bush stolen FDR from Dems. They must be seething.

Anyway, the old Compassionate Conservatism is dead. 9/11 put it on life support and Katrina basically killed it.

Congress (Congressional Democrats) will push me to raise taxes, and all I can say to them is Read My Lips, No New Taxes.

First of all, Kemp's were called "enterprize zones," and Clinton's were called "empowerment zones."

The GO Zones sound more like Clinton's idea than Kemp's. We will have to see the details to be sure -- and I hope you are right -- but I am fairly sure they will be closer to the Clinton version. And the Clinton version wasn't very good at all.

LBJ gave us the dependency society. Bush proposed spending the money in a way that actually starts addressing the root causes of poverty: Education and ownership.

Best comment of the night toward this point came from Chuck D on MSNBC (amid a bunch of other ridiculous race baiting).  He made the case if the rebuilt city is really nice, it will gentrify and be taken over by whites.  Amazing.  What he's really saying is that you have to have a ghetto if you want black people to be able to live there. I, for one, am tired of this mindset.

So I say: Go get 'em, George. Screw the race baiters. Fix the problem the Republican way (empowerment). Demonstrate the economic potential of a black middle class.  If Chuck D needs to guarantee that there's always a ghetto for "his people" to live in, that's his problem.  

Good - I agree with lots of folks that it was money money money, but at least he injected conservative economic theories/policies into the recovery, like encouraging home ownership and job creration (entrepreneure-el zones) instead of the same ol' liberal handouts.

Bad - not word for word, but "Katrina has shown the need for more federal government."  ARGH!

http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/002329.html

Better this than the Great Society, no?

Just curious but why is this any better than the Great Society?

For all it's ills the Great Society did achieve some pretty remarkable things.

<sigh>

I figure it out to be $2,100 per family.

On top of a deficit that has been over $4,000 per year for a number of of years now.

And a trade deficit of $7,700 per family.  That is money just pumped out to communist China.

... it failed because of subsidies and giveaways that required nothing in return from the recipient. This encouraged several forms of bad behavior.

At least in his words, Bush seems to imply that his giveaways will all have strings, and that those strings will each create commerce.  If they do, you may end up with a calculus like the one they do for the cost of education versus the cost of imprisonment.  That is, if you eradicate poverty by making poor people more productive, and therefore taxpayers, you reverse the drain poor people create in the system. Things like home ownership and entrepeneurial incentives have the potential to have this sort of effect.

The War on Poverty assumed that if you could end desperate poverty and improve eduction, the rest would take care of itself.  It was a bad idea and a miserable failure overall.

and shows a pic of the comment..

OK - Bill stole the phrase, but I was referring to Kemp's details. If all else fails, perhaps the state's can choose the details, such that some competition ensues.

We are going to have to wait for the details. Bush's GO Zones could be closed to to Kemp's enterprize zones or Clinton's empowerment zones. At this point, I'm betting on them being closer to the Clinton details than the Kemp details.

What pushes me to that conclusion is the way the early notes have been worded and the push for "accountability." Two big differences were that the Clinton proposal only offered non-refunable tax credits and incentives and there was government oversight of the zone planning. Most small businesses don't get an advantage from tax credits since they don't pay any taxes until they've been around a few years and are profitable enough to have to worry about taxes. With all the calls for accoutability, there will probably be some federal group established to look at development plans, essentially adding more bureacracy instead of removing it -- the market has to conform to what some Washington tools think is good development.

Maybe I'll be wrong, and they will be more like the Kemp idea, but if history is a guide, I'll probably right.

Kemp was just on TV, but he didn't talk too much about the Bush plan, so I don't kknow if he has any more information on it either.

I guess I'm just hoping Haley does all he can to set it up so that what happens in Mississippi can be clearly distinguished from what goes on in Louisiana. It's the old federalist/laboratory of the states argument.

It gives Haley a chance to reprise his role as chair of the GOP in a small area, but with very visible policy making powers this time.

I heard that sound when the levee broke. And on 12-7-41 and 9-11 and 1929. We must do this. A vital port and large American city was destroyed displacing multitudes. But i hope we will cut out the pork bills and reform medicaid/medicare, etc.

But just thank God thatits us that will be doing it.

"I want to thank all the civil rights groups and other speakers for noting my white skin color and based on that just assuming I hate black people. Good to know you guys never stereotype anyone by race."